The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud (1899)
Chapter Two
Freud’s primary aim is to show that dreams can be interpreted. Many lay individuals share this view, but they interpret dreams in a manner in which Freud finds unsatisfactory.
Some believe that dreams should be interpreted in a symbolic manner. In the Book of Genesis, for instance, Joseph interpreted the Pharaoh’s dream of seven fat cows followed by seven lean cows to mean that seven years of feast would be followed by seven years of famine. The problem with this type of interpretation is that it’s not based on any type of method; rather, successful interpretation depends upon “hitting on a clever idea” or intuition.
Others use the decoding method to interpret dreams. According to this method, every dream element contains a universal meaning. So, for example, if a certain letter appears in a dream, then one should consult a dream book to find out what the letter means. The problem with this method is that it depends upon the dream book, “and of this we have no guarantee.”
Freud’s method for interpreting dreams requires the patient to begin by individually free associate each element of the dream. In other words, Freud does not ask his patients, “What occurs to you in connection with this dream?” Rather, Freud will repeat the dream back to the patient “cut up into pieces.” The patient is then instructed to say whatever comes to his mind without leaving anything out.
Freud proceeds to share one of his own dreams and how he went about interpreting it. The dream, referred to as “Irma’s Injection,” occurred in July 1895. He first provides a preamble, telling us that he had been treating a patient named Irma for hysteria. Irma had not fully accepted Freud’s recommendations and had only received a partial healing. He went on summer vacation, thus pausing the treatment. On his vacation he was visited by his friend Otto. Otto had spent time with Irma and her family, so naturally Freud asked about Irma. Otto replied that Irma was better but not quite well. Freud felt insulted by these words, fearing that Otto believed that Freud’s treatment of Irma had been incompetent. Freud also feared that Otto had disparaged Freud to Irma’s family.
In the dream, Freud is in a large hall with numerous guests, Irma being one of them. He goes up to Irma and reproaches her for not taking his recommendations, telling her, “If you still get pains, it’s really only your fault.” Irma says that her pains have worsened. Freud notices that she looks pale and puffy, and he wonders if in his treatment of her he had overlooked an organic illness. He takes her to a window and looks down her throat. At first she’s recalcitrant, like a woman wearing dentures, meaning she’s not cooperating and opening her mouth widely. She finally complies, and looking down her throat, Freud sees a white patch and then looking further down, he sees nasal bones. Freud summons Dr. M, who corroborates Freud’s findings and adds, “There's no doubt it's an infection. But no matter, dysentery will supervene and the toxin will be eliminated.” Otto and Leopold are then there. Leopold examines Irma and shares his findings. Freud realizes that Otto had previously given Irma an injection containing propyl, propyls, propianic acid, and trimethylamine. He thinks that Otto should not have made this injection so thoughtlessly, and he then realizes that the syringe with which Otto had injected Irma had not been clean.
When interpreting the dream, Freud noted that the first two images were day residue: Irma being in a hall with large guests had reflected Freud’s thoughts of the day, as he had been thinking about running into her at the birthday party he was planning for his wife; and his reproach reflected thoughts he’d had about her regarding the treatment. The thought he’d had that Irma looked “pale and puffy,” indicated that perhaps someone else was being substituted for her, as in real life she didn’t look like that. This is confirmed in the next scene, as Irma standing by the window reminded him of a time he had seen one of her friends standing by a window. A number of associations then follow: Irma’s friend was being treated by Dr. M; Dr. M claimed that she had an organic illness; Freud had wondered with this woman in fact had hysteria, and he had wondered if she had ever wanted to be treated by him; he wondered if this woman would be a more compliant patient than Irma had been.
Chapter Three
Freud believes that dreams are fulfillments of our wishes. This is very obvious in some of our dreams. For example, Freud found that if he ate salty foods before bed, he would inevitably dream about drinking water, and he would then wake up wanting a drink of water. Freud shares another example of a dream containing an obvious wish-fulfillment: a newly married woman got pregnant and soon thereafter dreamt that she was having her period. The wish in the dream is apparent: the woman wanted to enjoy a few more years of freedom before becoming a mother.
Some dreams do not appear to be wish-fulfillments, but Freud insists that this does not disprove his theory; rather, it simply shows that the wishes in these dreams are disguised and that we have to work a little harder to find them. He provides another one of his own dreams as an example of this.
This context for the dream is that he has just learned that two professors at the local university have recommended him for a professorship. This news is unexpected since Freud is Jewish, and he has two Jewish friends, whom he refers to as R and M, who, evidently because they were Jewish, had been turned down for professorships. Freud’s dream contains this thought: “My friend R was my uncle. I had a great deal of affection for him.” This thought is then followed by this picture: “I saw before me his face, somewhat changed. It was as though it had been drawn out lengthways. A yellow beard that surrounded it stood out especially clearly.”
The thought “R was my uncle” leads to the association of Freud’s Uncle Josef. Josef had once been in trouble with the law, but Freud’s father had explained that he was not a bad man, just a simpleton. Thus, the dream seems to be saying that R is a simpleton and a criminal. Freud thinks to himself that R certainly isn’t a simpleton, but this seems to be what his dream was saying, as the R in the dream looked a great deal like Josef. Freud then thinks that R certainly isn’t a criminal, but then he remembers that several years earlier R had hit a boy with his bicycle and got himself in legal trouble. This thought then leads to the thought that his friend M — also Jewish, also denied a professorship — who had himself been in some legal trouble years earlier.
Freud concludes that his dream had made claims about two Jewish friends who were denied professorships, saying that R was a simpleton and criminal and M a criminal. Freud badly wished to become a professor, and if he believed that his friends were denied professorships because they were Jewish, then Freud’s own wish would be dashed. The reasoning here can be stated as follows: (1) R and M were denied professorships becaue they’re Jewish; (2) I'm Jewish; therefore (3) I too will be denied a professorship.
Although this much made sense, Freud didn’t understand why he had the thought in the dream that he had “a great deal of affection for R.” Freud didn’t feel affection for his uncle, and although he liked R well enough, the thought in the dream was a clear exaggeration of his feelings. By exaggerating his feelings, Freud realized, his mind had in fact disguised the dream’s meaning, which was that R is a simpleton and criminal. So on the one hand, the dream had expressed his wish, but on the other hand, the dream had made it difficult for him to understand this.
Freud provides an analogy to elucidate what seems to be happening here. Imagine, he writes, a political writer who wants to say things that will upset those in authority. The writer knows if he writes clearly, his writings will be censored, and so to avoid this censorship, he must be crafty, disguising his message — “for instance, he may describe a dispute between two Mandarins in the Middle Kingdom, when the people he really has in mind are officials in his own country.”
Similarly, in our dreams it seems as though there are two inner forces at work, one which expresses the wish, the other which exercises censorship. It’s as though the first force realizes that if it explicitly expresses the wish, the second force will censor it, and so to elude this censorship, the first force disguises the dream. And so in Freud’s dream, one inner force wanted to express the wish that Freud had a chance to be named professor while another inner force wanted to prevent this wish from being expressed, and the first force, in order to express the wish, engaged in dissimulation, expressing great affection for R, thus eluding the censor.
And why, you might ask, do we have an inner censor? Well, to protect us from information that would cause distress to our conscious mind. As Freud writes, “Everyone has wishes that he would prefer not to disclose to other people, and wishes that he will not admit even to himself.” So returning to Freud’s dream, although he wanted to be named professor, he would have felt upset had he realized that part of him thought poorly of his friend. He might have felt sad at the thought that his friend was a simpleton and criminal, and in turn he might have felt guilty for having this thought. Put differently, both forces have Freud’s best interest in mind, the first force wanting to encourage him by providing hope that his dream might be fulfilled and the second force wanting to spare him the negative feelings that might result from the first force’s message.
Of course, it would have been easier for his unconscious mind to be more direct and construct a dream that was explicitly about the party. But this would have been too obvious and might not have eluded the censor. And so to elude the censor, this dream-producing part of his unconscious engaged in dissimulation, drawing an obvious link between the dream and the book on cyclamens which he had seen the previous morning. All the while, this dream-producing part knew, there were subtle links between the book on cyclamens and the party — namely, Dr. Gardener, the blooming comment, and the conversation about Flora. And so this part knew that once Freud begin to make associations about the book on cyclamens he would eventually find these links and that his attention would turn to the party, thus enabling him to understand the dream’s true message.
(B) Past
Our dreams often contain elements from our childhoods, elements that are not always “accessible to waking memory.” Freud shares the story of a man who dreamt of his tutor being in bed with his nurse. The man shared the dream with his older brother, who told him that this had in fact happened. The older brother had been six at the time, and the lovers would get him drunk from beer before they had sex. At the time, the younger brother had been three and shared a bedroom with the nurse. Evidently, the tutor and nurse thought the younger boy was too young to be affected by their lovemaking and had sex in front of him. Freud shares the story of another man who had recurring dreams of a yellow lion. The man hadn’t known what to make of this until one day he found a china ornament of a yellow lion. He asked his mother about the ornament, who told him that it had been his favorite toy during his early years, something he had forgotten.
Freud shares that over a period of several years he himself had a series of dreams based on his longing to visit Rome. In one dream, for instance, he was looking out the window of train and saw a Roman bridge and then realized that the train was leaving the city and that he had never set foot in it; in another dream, someone had led him to the top of a hill and pointed to Rome, which was very far away and half-covered in mist; in yet another dream, Freud believed he had finally made it to Rome, only to realize that he was actually in a rural area far away from the city.
Freud did not understand the significance of these dreams until one day when he was planning a trip to Naples. He felt sad that he would be bypassing Rome yet again, and then he remembered a passage he’d read about Hannibal several years earlier. Like Hannibal, Freud suddenly thought, he too was fated to never see Rome. He then remembered that as a boy he had idolized Hannibal. When he learned about the Punic Wars, he had sympathized with the Carthaginians and not the Romans. Over the next few years, he became increasingly aware of the antisemitism that he and other Jews faced, he began to more deeply sympathize with Hannibal, who had himself been Semitic.
Freud then remembered a time when he’d been a boy and his father shared a story that had happened to him several years earlier. Jacob Freud had been walking through the city one morning, proud of the new fur cap he was wearing, when a Christian walked up to him and knocked the cap into the mud. The Christian shouted “Jew! Get off the pavement!” Upon hearing this story, Sigmund looked up to his father and asked how he’d responded. Jacob quietly replied, “I went into the roadway and picked up my cap.” Sigmund felt disappointed at his father’s weakness and contrasted his father’s story with a story in which Hannibal’s father had made his son “swear before the household altar to take vengeance on the Romans.” It was at that point, Freud now remembered, when his fascination with Hannibal began.
Bringing all this together, Freud was now able to see that his recurrent dreams about never quite making it to Rome could be traced back to his childhood. Freud grew up a Jew in a society dominated by Roman Catholics and at a young age had come to identify with the ancient Semitic general who had waged war against the Romans. Just as Hannibal had wanted to enter Rome, literally, so he could conquer it, Freud had wanted to enter Rome, symbolically, meaning he had wanted to conquer his society’s Roman Catholic antisemitism and rise to power and importance.
(C) Somatic Sensations
Freud next discusses the relationship between dreams and somatic sensations. By somatic sensations, he means anything we perceive through our senses (e.g., noises, smells, and internal body sensations). When we’re dreaming, somatic sensations can awaken us. Our dreams, Freud notices, often transform these somatic sensations in an apparent attempt to prevent us from waking. “Dreams, he writes, “are the guardians of sleep and not its disturbers.”
As an example of this, he tells the story of a man whose landlord tried to wake him because it was time for him to go to the hospital. Instead of waking, the man proceeded to dream that he was in bed at the hospital. If he were in bed at the hospital, then there would be no reason for him to wake up.
Although each individual constructs “his dream-world according to his individual peculiarities,” there are some dreams which “almost everyone has dreamt alike and which we are accustomed to assume must have the same meaning for everyone.”
First, embarrassing dreams of being naked. When we’re children, we feel no shame in being naked. More than just this, undressing “has an almost intoxicating effect on many children even in their later years.” When we look back at this time in our lives, it seems to us like a time of paradise. “That is why mankind were naked in Paradise and were without shame in one another’s presence. We can regain this Paradise every night in our dreams. Thus, dreams of being naked are dreams of exhibiting. Why do we feel embarrassed in these dreams? That’s the first system disguising its wish to get past the second system.”
Second, dreams in which a loved one dies. Freud provides an example of a woman who dreamt that she was at her nephew’s funeral and felt no grief. Interpretation: The woman did not want her nephew to die but simply wanted to see a man who attended the dream funeral. If one has a dream in which a loved one is dead and they feel grief in the dream, it might be the case that they wished they were dead.
Freud points out that it’s very common for siblings to express death wishes toward one another, says this is often unconscious and that children often don’t understand what death means. Freud then talks at length about the Oedipus Complex.
(D) Symbolism
Freud now talks about a second type of displacement. In the first type of displacement, one element is replaced by another element. In the second type, an abstract idea in the dream-thought is replaced by a concrete element in the dream-content. Freud, influenced here by Herbert Silberer, gives an example of how symbolism can occur in our daydreams, recalling a time he thought about needing to “revise an uneven passage in an essay’ and then had a daydream of smoothing a piece of wood; another time, he lost his train of thought” and then had a daydream in which the last line of letters in a printing press had fallen away.
(E) Symbolism in Typical Dreams
Freud next writes that things “that are symbolically connected today were probably united in the prehistoric times by conceptual and linguistic identity.” He emphasizes that a symbol must be understood within the context of the individual dreamer, but he adds that sometimes one’s associations cannot tell us the full meaning of a symbol, and for this we must reference the generally held understanding of the symbol. For example, if a king and queen appear in your dream, they probably represent your parents; “elongated objects, such as sticks, tree-trunks and umbrellas” might represent the penis; rooms generally represent women; and so on.
(F) Symbolism, Cont’d
Freud provides several examples of ways dreams can express more abstract ideas. (1) A lady dreamt that a servant was standing on a ladder above her, hurling a monkey and angora cat down at her. Translation: The dream was hurling invectives at her. (2) A man dreamt that he climbed to the top of a mountain that gave him an unusually extensive view. Translation: He was identifying with his brother, who was the editor of a survey that dealt with foreign affairs. (3) A woman had a dream in which all the people were especially big. Translation: The dream was about her childhood, a time in which adults were bigger than her. (4) A man dreamt of his uncle giving him a kiss in an automobile. Translation: The dream was about auto-eroticism. (5) A man dreamt he was an officer sitting at a table opposite the emperor. Translation: He was putting himself in opposition to his father.
(6) A man dreamt it was a quarter past five in the morning. Translation: The dream was calling his attention to the time when he was five years and three months old. (7) A woman dreamt she was walking with two little girls whose ages differed by 15 months. Translation: The two children represented her, and the dream was reminding her that when she was a child two traumatic events occurred 15 months apart. (8) A woman dreamt she was wearing a white blouse and walking down a road bathed in white. Translation: She first had intimate relations with Miss White on this road.
(G) Intellectual Activity in Dreams
Some dreams appear absurd and thus senseless, unable to be interpreted. Freud adduces one of his patient’s dreams. A man whose father had been dead for six years dreamt that his father was traveling by train; the train derailed, causing his head to become compressed; the man in the dream felt surprised that his father had “met with a calamity.” The dream at first seemed absurd since the man’s father had already died; it seemed as though he had forgotten this. But during the analysis, the man shared that he had recently commissioned a bust of his father. However, the sculptor messed up, making the father’s head too narrow (i.e., compressed), and the dreamer considered this a “calamity.” The man then remembered that when his father felt worried, he would press his hands against his head. Freud concludes that the dream was absurd because the event that caused the dream was absurd, meaning the bust did not look like the father and thus looked absurd.
Freud writes that if a dream is absurd it means that the dreamer has a judgment in his dream-thoughts that something in real life is absurd. Put differently, an absurd dream is another way of stating that something is contradictory but contradictory in a way that evokes derision or laughter.
Freud shifts gears and says that his purpose is to show that “the dream-work consists in nothing more” than condensation, displacement, and symbolism, as well as phantasy, which he will return to later. He notes that some dreams contain judgments, or intellectual argumentation. He writes that such argumentation should not be “regarded as an intellectual achievement of the dream-work” but rather as material that already exists in the dream-thoughts and taken from them and put into the dream-content.
(H) Affect in Dreams
He next discusses the appearance of affect in dreams. We often find it surprising when we have an emotional reaction in a dream that is drastically different than what we would have in real life. “In a dream I may be in a horrible, dangerous and disgusting situation without feeling any fear or repulsion.” This problem is resolved once we remember that the real meaning of a dream is often disguised. Our emotional response in a dream is always an appropriate response to the dream-thoughts although not always the dream-content. One of Freud’s patients, for instance, had a dream in which she was confronted with three lions but was not afraid. Upon analysis it was discovered that the lions were people the woman knew and had no reason to fear — i.e., her English mistress (Miss Lyons), her father (who wore a beard that “framed his face like a mane”), and the ballads of Lowe (which is the German word for lion).
(I) Secondary Revision
The fourth factor, as far as I can tell, is the censor, and Freud here recognizes that the censor is more involved in the dream than he’d previously thought. We previously saw how the censor forces the internal dreammaker to omit content from dreams, and it now appears as though the censor, during secondary revision, sometimes adds its own content to dreams in an attempt to make them more intelligible and less absurd. During secondary revision, for instance, the censor might add something to a dream in an attempt to bridge a gap between two parts in order to make those parts seem less disconnected. Freud talks about daydreams and says that in secondary revision the censor seeks to make our dreams more like our daydreams, meaning, I think, less absurd.
Chapter Seven
(A) The Forgetting of Dreams
Our memories often fail, as we sometimes only remember fragments of dreams. Moreover, it’s probable that we don’t always remember our dreams accurately, sometimes forgetting parts, other items inadvertently adding parts. This at first seems concerning, as Freud’s analysis of dreams has shown that “precisely the most trivial elements of a dream are indispensable to its interpretation.” However, in in reality it’s not a big deal, for in analysis it is often possible to restore what we’ve forgotten. In many cases, “one can reconstruct from a single remaining fragment,” not the dreamt-content, but the entirety of the dream-thoughts.
He argues that this forgetting is the result of resistance, as “whatever interrupts the progress of analytic work is a resistance.” He often sees evidence of this with his patients. If the patient’s account of the dream is difficult to follow, Freud will ask him to repeat the dream. The patient’s second telling is usually different, and Freud has found that the parts that are different are “the weak spot in the dream’s disguise.” In other words, in the second telling, the patient is attempting to replace “any expressions that threaten to betray its meaning by other less revealing ones.”
Freud next states that dreams are possible because during sleep “the resistance loses some of its power.” After this, he discusses superficial associations, that is, when we have one thought and then have another thought that seems only superficially related to the first. When this happens, one of two things is happening — either the censorship has concealed the connection between the two thoughts or the censorship has concealed one or both of the thoughts.
Freud compares the mental apparatus to a compound microscope. He refers to the different components of the mental apparatus as agencies or systems. These different systems have a relationship to one another much as the different lenses in a microscope are arranged behind one another.
Psychical activity begins with sense-perception (i.e., when we experience an external or internal stimuli) and ends with motor activity. Two systems are involved here, the system that receives the sense-perception (perception system) and the system that discharges it (motor system). When we receive the sense-perception, a trace or memory is left in the psychical apparatus. When memory-traces are linked together, they become associations. Some of these associations are conscious and some are unconscious.
While psychical activity normally moves from the perception system to the motor system, in dreams the physical activity moves toward the perception system and then turns into a sensory image. This is why he refers to dreams as regressive.
(C) Wish-Fulfillment
Freud discusses the causes of dreams. Sometimes it appears as though an unfulfilled conscious wish has caused a dream, as we might dream of that wish being fulfilled. Although this sometimes happens with children, when an adult dreams of a conscious wish, the dream is actually about a deeper wish, as the daytime wish has awakened “an unconscious wish with the same tenor.”
Sometimes our anxieties from the day find their way into our dreams, but in order to do so, they must conform to the demands of our dream life and turn into a wish. To illustrate this process, Freud shares one of his own dreams: He tells his wife that he has a piece of news for her, but she refuses to listen. He assures her that she would be happy to hear the news and says that their son’s officer’s mess had sent them money. He then goes into town with his wife and sees his son. The young man is not in his uniform but in sports clothes, and he climbs up onto a basket near a cupboard. Freud calls out to his son, but his son doesn’t hear him. It appears as though his son’s forehead is bandaged.
The day of the dream, Freud had had distressing thoughts about his son, who was in the military, and had not received news of him in over a week. The dream expressed Freud’s worry that his son had been injured or killed — e.g., his wife did not want to hear his news, his son had a bandage. The dream also expressed Freud’s wish that his son was okay — e.g., his son appeared, his son was not in his military clothes, his son was climbing (not falling).
To understand why dreams always contain wishes, Freud explains the psychical apparatus in more detail. When sensory excitation impinges on the apparatus, the apparatus attempts to discharge the excitation “along a motor path.” When internal needs cause an excitation, the apparatus seeks discharge in movement, meaning an internal change or an expression of emotion. For instance, when a baby is hungry (excitation), it screams until it is fed (its excitation is discharged). The baby comes to remember being fed, and the next time it is hungry, it will remember being fed. As the baby remembers being fed, it experiences a psychical impulse to be fed. We refer to this impulse as a wish.
(D) Arousal by Dreams, Anxiety Dreams
Unconscious thoughts and feelings never go away and can again become an excitation. For example, If I was humiliated 30 years ago, that emotion is still in my unconscious, and if it becomes an excitation, I will experience the humiliation as though it just happened. When this memory and in turn emotion becomes an excitation, one of two things must happen. First, the excitation can become discharged in the form of a movement. Second, the excitation can become bound to the preconscious, meaning that it is expressed in our preconscious thoughts, something that happens in dreams and can also happen in psychoanalysis.
Freud references the theories of other scholars he shared in Chapter One and declares that his own theory corroborates these other theories in all but two ways — first, only he believes that dreams are not meaningless, and second, only he believes that dreaming is primarily psychic, not somatic. He then explains why dream-thoughts can be so abnormal, so irrational.
Freud next returns his attention to the psychical apparatus. The apparatus attempts to avoid excitation or to at least limit too much excitation from accumulating. Too much excitation is unpleasurable, and so when we experience too much excitation, we wish to discharge the excess excitation.
He says that we have two systems which seek to limit unpleasure. The first system does not allow anything unpleasurable to come to mind; in other words, this system employs the “ostrich policy” of repression. The second system seeks to limit unpleasure by discharging excitations, but this is complicated, because by discharging excitations, the second system risks bringing unpleasurable thoughts to mind.
Freud’s primary aim is to show that dreams can be interpreted. Many lay individuals share this view, but they interpret dreams in a manner in which Freud finds unsatisfactory.
Some believe that dreams should be interpreted in a symbolic manner. In the Book of Genesis, for instance, Joseph interpreted the Pharaoh’s dream of seven fat cows followed by seven lean cows to mean that seven years of feast would be followed by seven years of famine. The problem with this type of interpretation is that it’s not based on any type of method; rather, successful interpretation depends upon “hitting on a clever idea” or intuition.
Others use the decoding method to interpret dreams. According to this method, every dream element contains a universal meaning. So, for example, if a certain letter appears in a dream, then one should consult a dream book to find out what the letter means. The problem with this method is that it depends upon the dream book, “and of this we have no guarantee.”
Freud’s method for interpreting dreams requires the patient to begin by individually free associate each element of the dream. In other words, Freud does not ask his patients, “What occurs to you in connection with this dream?” Rather, Freud will repeat the dream back to the patient “cut up into pieces.” The patient is then instructed to say whatever comes to his mind without leaving anything out.
Freud proceeds to share one of his own dreams and how he went about interpreting it. The dream, referred to as “Irma’s Injection,” occurred in July 1895. He first provides a preamble, telling us that he had been treating a patient named Irma for hysteria. Irma had not fully accepted Freud’s recommendations and had only received a partial healing. He went on summer vacation, thus pausing the treatment. On his vacation he was visited by his friend Otto. Otto had spent time with Irma and her family, so naturally Freud asked about Irma. Otto replied that Irma was better but not quite well. Freud felt insulted by these words, fearing that Otto believed that Freud’s treatment of Irma had been incompetent. Freud also feared that Otto had disparaged Freud to Irma’s family.
In the dream, Freud is in a large hall with numerous guests, Irma being one of them. He goes up to Irma and reproaches her for not taking his recommendations, telling her, “If you still get pains, it’s really only your fault.” Irma says that her pains have worsened. Freud notices that she looks pale and puffy, and he wonders if in his treatment of her he had overlooked an organic illness. He takes her to a window and looks down her throat. At first she’s recalcitrant, like a woman wearing dentures, meaning she’s not cooperating and opening her mouth widely. She finally complies, and looking down her throat, Freud sees a white patch and then looking further down, he sees nasal bones. Freud summons Dr. M, who corroborates Freud’s findings and adds, “There's no doubt it's an infection. But no matter, dysentery will supervene and the toxin will be eliminated.” Otto and Leopold are then there. Leopold examines Irma and shares his findings. Freud realizes that Otto had previously given Irma an injection containing propyl, propyls, propianic acid, and trimethylamine. He thinks that Otto should not have made this injection so thoughtlessly, and he then realizes that the syringe with which Otto had injected Irma had not been clean.
When interpreting the dream, Freud noted that the first two images were day residue: Irma being in a hall with large guests had reflected Freud’s thoughts of the day, as he had been thinking about running into her at the birthday party he was planning for his wife; and his reproach reflected thoughts he’d had about her regarding the treatment. The thought he’d had that Irma looked “pale and puffy,” indicated that perhaps someone else was being substituted for her, as in real life she didn’t look like that. This is confirmed in the next scene, as Irma standing by the window reminded him of a time he had seen one of her friends standing by a window. A number of associations then follow: Irma’s friend was being treated by Dr. M; Dr. M claimed that she had an organic illness; Freud had wondered with this woman in fact had hysteria, and he had wondered if she had ever wanted to be treated by him; he wondered if this woman would be a more compliant patient than Irma had been.
Chapter Three
Freud believes that dreams are fulfillments of our wishes. This is very obvious in some of our dreams. For example, Freud found that if he ate salty foods before bed, he would inevitably dream about drinking water, and he would then wake up wanting a drink of water. Freud shares another example of a dream containing an obvious wish-fulfillment: a newly married woman got pregnant and soon thereafter dreamt that she was having her period. The wish in the dream is apparent: the woman wanted to enjoy a few more years of freedom before becoming a mother.
Chapter Four
Some dreams do not appear to be wish-fulfillments, but Freud insists that this does not disprove his theory; rather, it simply shows that the wishes in these dreams are disguised and that we have to work a little harder to find them. He provides another one of his own dreams as an example of this.
This context for the dream is that he has just learned that two professors at the local university have recommended him for a professorship. This news is unexpected since Freud is Jewish, and he has two Jewish friends, whom he refers to as R and M, who, evidently because they were Jewish, had been turned down for professorships. Freud’s dream contains this thought: “My friend R was my uncle. I had a great deal of affection for him.” This thought is then followed by this picture: “I saw before me his face, somewhat changed. It was as though it had been drawn out lengthways. A yellow beard that surrounded it stood out especially clearly.”
The thought “R was my uncle” leads to the association of Freud’s Uncle Josef. Josef had once been in trouble with the law, but Freud’s father had explained that he was not a bad man, just a simpleton. Thus, the dream seems to be saying that R is a simpleton and a criminal. Freud thinks to himself that R certainly isn’t a simpleton, but this seems to be what his dream was saying, as the R in the dream looked a great deal like Josef. Freud then thinks that R certainly isn’t a criminal, but then he remembers that several years earlier R had hit a boy with his bicycle and got himself in legal trouble. This thought then leads to the thought that his friend M — also Jewish, also denied a professorship — who had himself been in some legal trouble years earlier.
Freud concludes that his dream had made claims about two Jewish friends who were denied professorships, saying that R was a simpleton and criminal and M a criminal. Freud badly wished to become a professor, and if he believed that his friends were denied professorships because they were Jewish, then Freud’s own wish would be dashed. The reasoning here can be stated as follows: (1) R and M were denied professorships becaue they’re Jewish; (2) I'm Jewish; therefore (3) I too will be denied a professorship.
If however it were the case that R and M had been denied for other reasons — they were simpletons, they were criminals — then there might be hope for him. This reasoning can be stated as follows: (1) R was denied a professorship because he's a simpleton and criminal and M was denied a professorship because he’s a crimina; (2) I’m neither a simpleton nor criminal; therefore, (3) I might be offered a professorship.
Although this much made sense, Freud didn’t understand why he had the thought in the dream that he had “a great deal of affection for R.” Freud didn’t feel affection for his uncle, and although he liked R well enough, the thought in the dream was a clear exaggeration of his feelings. By exaggerating his feelings, Freud realized, his mind had in fact disguised the dream’s meaning, which was that R is a simpleton and criminal. So on the one hand, the dream had expressed his wish, but on the other hand, the dream had made it difficult for him to understand this.
Freud provides an analogy to elucidate what seems to be happening here. Imagine, he writes, a political writer who wants to say things that will upset those in authority. The writer knows if he writes clearly, his writings will be censored, and so to avoid this censorship, he must be crafty, disguising his message — “for instance, he may describe a dispute between two Mandarins in the Middle Kingdom, when the people he really has in mind are officials in his own country.”
Similarly, in our dreams it seems as though there are two inner forces at work, one which expresses the wish, the other which exercises censorship. It’s as though the first force realizes that if it explicitly expresses the wish, the second force will censor it, and so to elude this censorship, the first force disguises the dream. And so in Freud’s dream, one inner force wanted to express the wish that Freud had a chance to be named professor while another inner force wanted to prevent this wish from being expressed, and the first force, in order to express the wish, engaged in dissimulation, expressing great affection for R, thus eluding the censor.
And why, you might ask, do we have an inner censor? Well, to protect us from information that would cause distress to our conscious mind. As Freud writes, “Everyone has wishes that he would prefer not to disclose to other people, and wishes that he will not admit even to himself.” So returning to Freud’s dream, although he wanted to be named professor, he would have felt upset had he realized that part of him thought poorly of his friend. He might have felt sad at the thought that his friend was a simpleton and criminal, and in turn he might have felt guilty for having this thought. Put differently, both forces have Freud’s best interest in mind, the first force wanting to encourage him by providing hope that his dream might be fulfilled and the second force wanting to spare him the negative feelings that might result from the first force’s message.
Chapter Five
Freud next moves to understand other questions that have been raised about dreams.
Freud next moves to understand other questions that have been raised about dreams.
(A) Day Residue
First, the source of dream elements. He asserts that “in every dream it is possible to find a point of contact with the experiences of the previous day.” Consequently, he writes that he will often begin interpreting a dream “by looking for the event of the previous day that set it in motion.” He has found that whenever he thinks the source of a dream was something that happened two or three days earlier, he will inevitably learn that the source was in fact something that happened the previous day.
To illustrate how a previous day’s events can set a dream in motion, Freud shares the following dream which he himself had: I had written a monograph on a certain plant. The book lay before me and I was at the moment turning over a folded colored plate. Bound up in each copy there was a dried specimen of the plant, as though it had been taken from a herbarium.
When Freud sat down to think about dream, the image of the “monograph on a certain plant” led to the following associations: the previous morning he had been in a bookshop and seen a book about cyclamens; cyclamens were his wife’s favorite flower, and upon seeing the book, he told himself that he needed to buy her flowers more often; this self-reproach reminded him of a story he had recently told some friends about Frau L and how her husband had forgotten to buy her flowers for her birthday and in so doing had hurt her feelings.
Thinking again about “monograph on a certain plant,” Freud then had a second series of associations: he first remembered that he had once authored a monograph on a plant, the coca plant; his monograph had contributed to Karl Koller’s discovery that cocaine has “anesthetic properties” and can thus be utilized by surgeons; Freud next remembered that the previous day he had had a daydream about getting glaucoma and needing to go in for surgery; in the daydream he saw himself going to a foreign country for the surgery, meaning that the surgeon probably wouldn’t know who he was and wouldn’t know that Freud was in some sense responsible for the anesthesia the surgeon would use on him; Freud next remembered a time in which his father had had glaucoma surgery and how the surgeon, Freud’s friend Dr. Konigstein, had at the time acknowledged Freud’s contribution to the development of the anesthesia that he was about to use.
Freud’s associations continued: he next remembered that the previous day he had been reading a book in which Karl Koller had been recognized for discovering the anesthetic properties of cocaine; the book had not mentioned Freud’s part in this discovery; that evening Freud went to a party, and there he had a conversation with Dr. Konigstein; he had also had a conversation with Dr. Gardener, who had been one of the authors of the book which had lauded Karl Koller; upon reflection, Freud realized the significance of the man’s name, Gardener; he then remembered that he had told Dr. Gardener and his wife that they both looked blooming, another reference to plants; he further remembered that he had and Dr. Konigstein had spent some time talking about Frau L, yet another plant reference, as well as one of Freud’s patients, a woman named Flora, and yet another one.
When Freud thought how in the dream he had seen the book laying before him, he thought of a line that his friend had recently written him in a letter. The friend had just received a draft of a section of The Interpretation of Dreams and had praised the draft and wrote back that he could see in his mind’s eye the entire book published and laying before him.
Freud notes that all of these associations pointed in the same direction, communicating a specific message, the message being that Freud had been overlooked for the part he’d played in discovering the anesthetic properties of cocaine and that he wanted the recognition that he was due. (As we first saw in the dream about Irma, Freud’s professional reputation mattered to him a great deal.) Had Freud not attended the party that evening, his unconscious would not have constructed the particular dream we’ve been discussing. For if he had not attended the party, then this particular dream would have just led to some associations about flowers and thus would have failed to communicate its intended message. It was only when he focused on the party and began to make associations from things that had happened at the party that the dream’s message could be understood.
To illustrate how a previous day’s events can set a dream in motion, Freud shares the following dream which he himself had: I had written a monograph on a certain plant. The book lay before me and I was at the moment turning over a folded colored plate. Bound up in each copy there was a dried specimen of the plant, as though it had been taken from a herbarium.
When Freud sat down to think about dream, the image of the “monograph on a certain plant” led to the following associations: the previous morning he had been in a bookshop and seen a book about cyclamens; cyclamens were his wife’s favorite flower, and upon seeing the book, he told himself that he needed to buy her flowers more often; this self-reproach reminded him of a story he had recently told some friends about Frau L and how her husband had forgotten to buy her flowers for her birthday and in so doing had hurt her feelings.
Thinking again about “monograph on a certain plant,” Freud then had a second series of associations: he first remembered that he had once authored a monograph on a plant, the coca plant; his monograph had contributed to Karl Koller’s discovery that cocaine has “anesthetic properties” and can thus be utilized by surgeons; Freud next remembered that the previous day he had had a daydream about getting glaucoma and needing to go in for surgery; in the daydream he saw himself going to a foreign country for the surgery, meaning that the surgeon probably wouldn’t know who he was and wouldn’t know that Freud was in some sense responsible for the anesthesia the surgeon would use on him; Freud next remembered a time in which his father had had glaucoma surgery and how the surgeon, Freud’s friend Dr. Konigstein, had at the time acknowledged Freud’s contribution to the development of the anesthesia that he was about to use.
Freud’s associations continued: he next remembered that the previous day he had been reading a book in which Karl Koller had been recognized for discovering the anesthetic properties of cocaine; the book had not mentioned Freud’s part in this discovery; that evening Freud went to a party, and there he had a conversation with Dr. Konigstein; he had also had a conversation with Dr. Gardener, who had been one of the authors of the book which had lauded Karl Koller; upon reflection, Freud realized the significance of the man’s name, Gardener; he then remembered that he had told Dr. Gardener and his wife that they both looked blooming, another reference to plants; he further remembered that he had and Dr. Konigstein had spent some time talking about Frau L, yet another plant reference, as well as one of Freud’s patients, a woman named Flora, and yet another one.
When Freud thought how in the dream he had seen the book laying before him, he thought of a line that his friend had recently written him in a letter. The friend had just received a draft of a section of The Interpretation of Dreams and had praised the draft and wrote back that he could see in his mind’s eye the entire book published and laying before him.
Freud notes that all of these associations pointed in the same direction, communicating a specific message, the message being that Freud had been overlooked for the part he’d played in discovering the anesthetic properties of cocaine and that he wanted the recognition that he was due. (As we first saw in the dream about Irma, Freud’s professional reputation mattered to him a great deal.) Had Freud not attended the party that evening, his unconscious would not have constructed the particular dream we’ve been discussing. For if he had not attended the party, then this particular dream would have just led to some associations about flowers and thus would have failed to communicate its intended message. It was only when he focused on the party and began to make associations from things that had happened at the party that the dream’s message could be understood.
Of course, it would have been easier for his unconscious mind to be more direct and construct a dream that was explicitly about the party. But this would have been too obvious and might not have eluded the censor. And so to elude the censor, this dream-producing part of his unconscious engaged in dissimulation, drawing an obvious link between the dream and the book on cyclamens which he had seen the previous morning. All the while, this dream-producing part knew, there were subtle links between the book on cyclamens and the party — namely, Dr. Gardener, the blooming comment, and the conversation about Flora. And so this part knew that once Freud begin to make associations about the book on cyclamens he would eventually find these links and that his attention would turn to the party, thus enabling him to understand the dream’s true message.
Our dreams often contain elements from our childhoods, elements that are not always “accessible to waking memory.” Freud shares the story of a man who dreamt of his tutor being in bed with his nurse. The man shared the dream with his older brother, who told him that this had in fact happened. The older brother had been six at the time, and the lovers would get him drunk from beer before they had sex. At the time, the younger brother had been three and shared a bedroom with the nurse. Evidently, the tutor and nurse thought the younger boy was too young to be affected by their lovemaking and had sex in front of him. Freud shares the story of another man who had recurring dreams of a yellow lion. The man hadn’t known what to make of this until one day he found a china ornament of a yellow lion. He asked his mother about the ornament, who told him that it had been his favorite toy during his early years, something he had forgotten.
Freud shares that over a period of several years he himself had a series of dreams based on his longing to visit Rome. In one dream, for instance, he was looking out the window of train and saw a Roman bridge and then realized that the train was leaving the city and that he had never set foot in it; in another dream, someone had led him to the top of a hill and pointed to Rome, which was very far away and half-covered in mist; in yet another dream, Freud believed he had finally made it to Rome, only to realize that he was actually in a rural area far away from the city.
Freud did not understand the significance of these dreams until one day when he was planning a trip to Naples. He felt sad that he would be bypassing Rome yet again, and then he remembered a passage he’d read about Hannibal several years earlier. Like Hannibal, Freud suddenly thought, he too was fated to never see Rome. He then remembered that as a boy he had idolized Hannibal. When he learned about the Punic Wars, he had sympathized with the Carthaginians and not the Romans. Over the next few years, he became increasingly aware of the antisemitism that he and other Jews faced, he began to more deeply sympathize with Hannibal, who had himself been Semitic.
Freud then remembered a time when he’d been a boy and his father shared a story that had happened to him several years earlier. Jacob Freud had been walking through the city one morning, proud of the new fur cap he was wearing, when a Christian walked up to him and knocked the cap into the mud. The Christian shouted “Jew! Get off the pavement!” Upon hearing this story, Sigmund looked up to his father and asked how he’d responded. Jacob quietly replied, “I went into the roadway and picked up my cap.” Sigmund felt disappointed at his father’s weakness and contrasted his father’s story with a story in which Hannibal’s father had made his son “swear before the household altar to take vengeance on the Romans.” It was at that point, Freud now remembered, when his fascination with Hannibal began.
Bringing all this together, Freud was now able to see that his recurrent dreams about never quite making it to Rome could be traced back to his childhood. Freud grew up a Jew in a society dominated by Roman Catholics and at a young age had come to identify with the ancient Semitic general who had waged war against the Romans. Just as Hannibal had wanted to enter Rome, literally, so he could conquer it, Freud had wanted to enter Rome, symbolically, meaning he had wanted to conquer his society’s Roman Catholic antisemitism and rise to power and importance.
(C) Somatic Sensations
Freud next discusses the relationship between dreams and somatic sensations. By somatic sensations, he means anything we perceive through our senses (e.g., noises, smells, and internal body sensations). When we’re dreaming, somatic sensations can awaken us. Our dreams, Freud notices, often transform these somatic sensations in an apparent attempt to prevent us from waking. “Dreams, he writes, “are the guardians of sleep and not its disturbers.”
As an example of this, he tells the story of a man whose landlord tried to wake him because it was time for him to go to the hospital. Instead of waking, the man proceeded to dream that he was in bed at the hospital. If he were in bed at the hospital, then there would be no reason for him to wake up.
Freud also shares a personal example of this phenomenon. At the time he’d had an extremely painful boil at the base of his scrotum. One night he had a dream in which he was riding a horse, that is, performing an activity that would have been unbearably painful. In the dream, he experienced the real-life pain he was experiencing as the saddle under him. It was as though the dream had been encouraging him to go on sleeping, saying, “There’s no need to wake up. You haven’t got a boil; for you’re riding a horse, and it’s quite certain that you couldn’t ride if you had a boil in that particular place.”
Dreams can make use of physical sensations in other ways as well. Most importantly, dreams often use physical sensations to communicate messages, to express wishes, just as happens with psychical material. For instance, Freud’s dream of riding the horse not only prolonged his sleep but also communicated a message about his colleague, who wore suits the same color as the horse in the dream.
Dreams can make use of physical sensations in other ways as well. Most importantly, dreams often use physical sensations to communicate messages, to express wishes, just as happens with psychical material. For instance, Freud’s dream of riding the horse not only prolonged his sleep but also communicated a message about his colleague, who wore suits the same color as the horse in the dream.
(D) Typical Dreams
First, embarrassing dreams of being naked. When we’re children, we feel no shame in being naked. More than just this, undressing “has an almost intoxicating effect on many children even in their later years.” When we look back at this time in our lives, it seems to us like a time of paradise. “That is why mankind were naked in Paradise and were without shame in one another’s presence. We can regain this Paradise every night in our dreams. Thus, dreams of being naked are dreams of exhibiting. Why do we feel embarrassed in these dreams? That’s the first system disguising its wish to get past the second system.”
Second, dreams in which a loved one dies. Freud provides an example of a woman who dreamt that she was at her nephew’s funeral and felt no grief. Interpretation: The woman did not want her nephew to die but simply wanted to see a man who attended the dream funeral. If one has a dream in which a loved one is dead and they feel grief in the dream, it might be the case that they wished they were dead.
Freud points out that it’s very common for siblings to express death wishes toward one another, says this is often unconscious and that children often don’t understand what death means. Freud then talks at length about the Oedipus Complex.
Chapter Six
Freud distinguishes a dream’s manifest content (or dream-content) from its latent content (dream-thoughts). Dream-content is what the dream appears to be about, and dream-thoughts are what it’s actually about. Dream-content and dream-thoughts can be thought of as descriptions of the same event in different languages. It is our job to interpret dream-content into language we can understand.
(A) Condensation
Dream-content is a highly condensed version of our dream-thoughts. Freud emphasizes that condensation does not involve omitting parts of a dream but rather compressing the dream. I imagine Russian nesting dolls or several clothing items tightly packed into a suitcase. It is our job to unpack dream-content, and we generally do this by listing the associations attached to each element of the dream. If we wrote out our dreams, the dream-content would generally take up a single sheet of paper while the dream-thoughts would take up six to eight sheets of paper.
We have previously seen how condensation worked in Irma’s injection and the dream of the botanical monograph. In these dreams, single dream elements contain multiple meanings, multiple thoughts, feelings, and memories. In these dreams, we also saw how two real life people are sometimes condensed into the same person; and so Dr. M seemed to be both Dr. M and Freud’s brother, and R seemed to be both R and Freud’s uncle. Now Freud writes that condensation can work by combining words or names. For instance, he once had a dream in which the following sentence appeared: “It is written in a positively norekdal style.” The word “norekdal” was not a real word, but when Freud analyzed the dream, he realized that it consisted of the names of two characters in Ibsen plays, “Nora” and “Ekdal,” and he then followed the associations that came when thinking of these characters.
Freud notes that dreams are “overdetermined.” This means that a single dream element connects with many dream-thoughts; put differently, during free association, we find that a single dream element leads to many different ideas. In the dream of the botanical monograph, for instance, the botanical monograph led to associations about Freud’s monograph on cocaine, his influence on Karl Koller, his interactions with Dr. Konigstein, and so on.
(B) Displacement
Displacement is the act in which the significant elements of the dream-thoughts are made to appear insignificant in dream-content. In the dream of the botanical monograph, for example, the important part of the dream-content seemed to be “botanical,” but the dream-thoughts were actually Freud’s monograph and the lack of recognition he received for it. We often find out what’s important in a dream not by focusing on what seems important in the dream-content but by noting which ideas keep recurring when we free associate from these dream elements.
Dreams, as we’ve seen, can be thought of as a foreign language that we need to translate. Of course, languages have conjunctions, that is, words like “and,” “but,” and “or” that describe the relationships between different objects. Given this, it’s fair to ask, how do dreams describe relationships between different objects? Freud provides some answers.
Similarities. Dreams use several different strategies for showing that two or more elements are similar. Strategy #1: Identification. — only one element appears in the manifest-content even though that element represents itself as well as another element. Freud adds that every dream is ultimately about the dreamer. And so if the dreamer does not appear in the dream-content, it must be assumed that he’s in the dream but disguised. Strategy #2: Composition — two elements are combined to produce an element that has some qualities of the first element and some qualities of the second.
Freud shares two additional strategies that he doesn’t name. Strategy #3: The dream makes different elements appear closely together; he likes this strategy to “the painter who, in a picture of the School of Athens or of Parnassus, represents in one group all the philosophers or all the poets.” Strategy #4: A common quality shared by two people appears in the dream.
A dream might show similarities for a number of different reasons. The dream might be highlighting a quality common to two elements — e.g., in Irma’s Injection, composition occurred with Dr. M and Freud’s brother to show that they had both recently rejected one of Freud’s suggestions. Or the dream might be express a wish that the two elements were alike — e.g., in Irma’s Injection, Freud was reminded of Irma’s friend when seeing Irma by the window, and through associations he realized that he wished he had treated Irma’s friend, not Irma.
Causality. Dreams sometimes show that one element caused another by having one dream follow another with the first element being in the first dream and the second element in the second dream. Dreams sometimes show that one element caused another by showing us the first element being transformed into the second.
Either-Or. Dreams often express the correlative conjunction “either-or” by including both ideas as if they were both valid. He writes that this is what happened in Irma’s injection, as several possibilities were given for Irma’s sickness, some of which were mutually exclusive. Consequently, Freud believes that the possibilities given in the dream could be understood as follows: “Irma remains sick because either she has an organic illness or she’s not accepting my recommendations.”
Contradictions. Similarly, dreams often present contradictions by simply including them together. He adduces the dream of a woman who held a “blossoming branch” that alluded to sexual innocence as well as menstruation.
More. Freud talks about other strategies dreams use in order to express ideas. A reversal, or turning a thing into its opposite, expresses a wish and seems to say, “If only it had been the other way round!” Sometimes the reversal is chronological, meaning the end of an event is represented as occurring at the beginning. For example, one patient had a dream in which his father was scolding him for coming home so late. In reality, the patient had been angry with his father for always coming home too early. “He would have preferred it if his father had not come home at all, and this was the same thing as a death-wish against his father.”
Freud next points out that some dream elements evoke more sensory intensity than others. Although it might seem that this implies that these elements have more psychical value, it is in fact often the case that is simply a sleight of hand meant to throw off the dream censor.
Freud distinguishes a dream’s manifest content (or dream-content) from its latent content (dream-thoughts). Dream-content is what the dream appears to be about, and dream-thoughts are what it’s actually about. Dream-content and dream-thoughts can be thought of as descriptions of the same event in different languages. It is our job to interpret dream-content into language we can understand.
(A) Condensation
Dream-content is a highly condensed version of our dream-thoughts. Freud emphasizes that condensation does not involve omitting parts of a dream but rather compressing the dream. I imagine Russian nesting dolls or several clothing items tightly packed into a suitcase. It is our job to unpack dream-content, and we generally do this by listing the associations attached to each element of the dream. If we wrote out our dreams, the dream-content would generally take up a single sheet of paper while the dream-thoughts would take up six to eight sheets of paper.
We have previously seen how condensation worked in Irma’s injection and the dream of the botanical monograph. In these dreams, single dream elements contain multiple meanings, multiple thoughts, feelings, and memories. In these dreams, we also saw how two real life people are sometimes condensed into the same person; and so Dr. M seemed to be both Dr. M and Freud’s brother, and R seemed to be both R and Freud’s uncle. Now Freud writes that condensation can work by combining words or names. For instance, he once had a dream in which the following sentence appeared: “It is written in a positively norekdal style.” The word “norekdal” was not a real word, but when Freud analyzed the dream, he realized that it consisted of the names of two characters in Ibsen plays, “Nora” and “Ekdal,” and he then followed the associations that came when thinking of these characters.
Freud notes that dreams are “overdetermined.” This means that a single dream element connects with many dream-thoughts; put differently, during free association, we find that a single dream element leads to many different ideas. In the dream of the botanical monograph, for instance, the botanical monograph led to associations about Freud’s monograph on cocaine, his influence on Karl Koller, his interactions with Dr. Konigstein, and so on.
(B) Displacement
Displacement is the act in which the significant elements of the dream-thoughts are made to appear insignificant in dream-content. In the dream of the botanical monograph, for example, the important part of the dream-content seemed to be “botanical,” but the dream-thoughts were actually Freud’s monograph and the lack of recognition he received for it. We often find out what’s important in a dream not by focusing on what seems important in the dream-content but by noting which ideas keep recurring when we free associate from these dream elements.
( C) Conjunctions
Dreams, as we’ve seen, can be thought of as a foreign language that we need to translate. Of course, languages have conjunctions, that is, words like “and,” “but,” and “or” that describe the relationships between different objects. Given this, it’s fair to ask, how do dreams describe relationships between different objects? Freud provides some answers.
Similarities. Dreams use several different strategies for showing that two or more elements are similar. Strategy #1: Identification. — only one element appears in the manifest-content even though that element represents itself as well as another element. Freud adds that every dream is ultimately about the dreamer. And so if the dreamer does not appear in the dream-content, it must be assumed that he’s in the dream but disguised. Strategy #2: Composition — two elements are combined to produce an element that has some qualities of the first element and some qualities of the second.
Freud shares two additional strategies that he doesn’t name. Strategy #3: The dream makes different elements appear closely together; he likes this strategy to “the painter who, in a picture of the School of Athens or of Parnassus, represents in one group all the philosophers or all the poets.” Strategy #4: A common quality shared by two people appears in the dream.
A dream might show similarities for a number of different reasons. The dream might be highlighting a quality common to two elements — e.g., in Irma’s Injection, composition occurred with Dr. M and Freud’s brother to show that they had both recently rejected one of Freud’s suggestions. Or the dream might be express a wish that the two elements were alike — e.g., in Irma’s Injection, Freud was reminded of Irma’s friend when seeing Irma by the window, and through associations he realized that he wished he had treated Irma’s friend, not Irma.
Causality. Dreams sometimes show that one element caused another by having one dream follow another with the first element being in the first dream and the second element in the second dream. Dreams sometimes show that one element caused another by showing us the first element being transformed into the second.
Either-Or. Dreams often express the correlative conjunction “either-or” by including both ideas as if they were both valid. He writes that this is what happened in Irma’s injection, as several possibilities were given for Irma’s sickness, some of which were mutually exclusive. Consequently, Freud believes that the possibilities given in the dream could be understood as follows: “Irma remains sick because either she has an organic illness or she’s not accepting my recommendations.”
Contradictions. Similarly, dreams often present contradictions by simply including them together. He adduces the dream of a woman who held a “blossoming branch” that alluded to sexual innocence as well as menstruation.
More. Freud talks about other strategies dreams use in order to express ideas. A reversal, or turning a thing into its opposite, expresses a wish and seems to say, “If only it had been the other way round!” Sometimes the reversal is chronological, meaning the end of an event is represented as occurring at the beginning. For example, one patient had a dream in which his father was scolding him for coming home so late. In reality, the patient had been angry with his father for always coming home too early. “He would have preferred it if his father had not come home at all, and this was the same thing as a death-wish against his father.”
Freud next points out that some dream elements evoke more sensory intensity than others. Although it might seem that this implies that these elements have more psychical value, it is in fact often the case that is simply a sleight of hand meant to throw off the dream censor.
Freud now talks about a second type of displacement. In the first type of displacement, one element is replaced by another element. In the second type, an abstract idea in the dream-thought is replaced by a concrete element in the dream-content. Freud, influenced here by Herbert Silberer, gives an example of how symbolism can occur in our daydreams, recalling a time he thought about needing to “revise an uneven passage in an essay’ and then had a daydream of smoothing a piece of wood; another time, he lost his train of thought” and then had a daydream in which the last line of letters in a printing press had fallen away.
(E) Symbolism in Typical Dreams
Freud next writes that things “that are symbolically connected today were probably united in the prehistoric times by conceptual and linguistic identity.” He emphasizes that a symbol must be understood within the context of the individual dreamer, but he adds that sometimes one’s associations cannot tell us the full meaning of a symbol, and for this we must reference the generally held understanding of the symbol. For example, if a king and queen appear in your dream, they probably represent your parents; “elongated objects, such as sticks, tree-trunks and umbrellas” might represent the penis; rooms generally represent women; and so on.
(F) Symbolism, Cont’d
Freud provides several examples of ways dreams can express more abstract ideas. (1) A lady dreamt that a servant was standing on a ladder above her, hurling a monkey and angora cat down at her. Translation: The dream was hurling invectives at her. (2) A man dreamt that he climbed to the top of a mountain that gave him an unusually extensive view. Translation: He was identifying with his brother, who was the editor of a survey that dealt with foreign affairs. (3) A woman had a dream in which all the people were especially big. Translation: The dream was about her childhood, a time in which adults were bigger than her. (4) A man dreamt of his uncle giving him a kiss in an automobile. Translation: The dream was about auto-eroticism. (5) A man dreamt he was an officer sitting at a table opposite the emperor. Translation: He was putting himself in opposition to his father.
(6) A man dreamt it was a quarter past five in the morning. Translation: The dream was calling his attention to the time when he was five years and three months old. (7) A woman dreamt she was walking with two little girls whose ages differed by 15 months. Translation: The two children represented her, and the dream was reminding her that when she was a child two traumatic events occurred 15 months apart. (8) A woman dreamt she was wearing a white blouse and walking down a road bathed in white. Translation: She first had intimate relations with Miss White on this road.
(G) Intellectual Activity in Dreams
Some dreams appear absurd and thus senseless, unable to be interpreted. Freud adduces one of his patient’s dreams. A man whose father had been dead for six years dreamt that his father was traveling by train; the train derailed, causing his head to become compressed; the man in the dream felt surprised that his father had “met with a calamity.” The dream at first seemed absurd since the man’s father had already died; it seemed as though he had forgotten this. But during the analysis, the man shared that he had recently commissioned a bust of his father. However, the sculptor messed up, making the father’s head too narrow (i.e., compressed), and the dreamer considered this a “calamity.” The man then remembered that when his father felt worried, he would press his hands against his head. Freud concludes that the dream was absurd because the event that caused the dream was absurd, meaning the bust did not look like the father and thus looked absurd.
Freud writes that if a dream is absurd it means that the dreamer has a judgment in his dream-thoughts that something in real life is absurd. Put differently, an absurd dream is another way of stating that something is contradictory but contradictory in a way that evokes derision or laughter.
Freud shifts gears and says that his purpose is to show that “the dream-work consists in nothing more” than condensation, displacement, and symbolism, as well as phantasy, which he will return to later. He notes that some dreams contain judgments, or intellectual argumentation. He writes that such argumentation should not be “regarded as an intellectual achievement of the dream-work” but rather as material that already exists in the dream-thoughts and taken from them and put into the dream-content.
(H) Affect in Dreams
He next discusses the appearance of affect in dreams. We often find it surprising when we have an emotional reaction in a dream that is drastically different than what we would have in real life. “In a dream I may be in a horrible, dangerous and disgusting situation without feeling any fear or repulsion.” This problem is resolved once we remember that the real meaning of a dream is often disguised. Our emotional response in a dream is always an appropriate response to the dream-thoughts although not always the dream-content. One of Freud’s patients, for instance, had a dream in which she was confronted with three lions but was not afraid. Upon analysis it was discovered that the lions were people the woman knew and had no reason to fear — i.e., her English mistress (Miss Lyons), her father (who wore a beard that “framed his face like a mane”), and the ballads of Lowe (which is the German word for lion).
(I) Secondary Revision
The fourth factor, as far as I can tell, is the censor, and Freud here recognizes that the censor is more involved in the dream than he’d previously thought. We previously saw how the censor forces the internal dreammaker to omit content from dreams, and it now appears as though the censor, during secondary revision, sometimes adds its own content to dreams in an attempt to make them more intelligible and less absurd. During secondary revision, for instance, the censor might add something to a dream in an attempt to bridge a gap between two parts in order to make those parts seem less disconnected. Freud talks about daydreams and says that in secondary revision the censor seeks to make our dreams more like our daydreams, meaning, I think, less absurd.
Chapter Seven
(A) The Forgetting of Dreams
Our memories often fail, as we sometimes only remember fragments of dreams. Moreover, it’s probable that we don’t always remember our dreams accurately, sometimes forgetting parts, other items inadvertently adding parts. This at first seems concerning, as Freud’s analysis of dreams has shown that “precisely the most trivial elements of a dream are indispensable to its interpretation.” However, in in reality it’s not a big deal, for in analysis it is often possible to restore what we’ve forgotten. In many cases, “one can reconstruct from a single remaining fragment,” not the dreamt-content, but the entirety of the dream-thoughts.
He argues that this forgetting is the result of resistance, as “whatever interrupts the progress of analytic work is a resistance.” He often sees evidence of this with his patients. If the patient’s account of the dream is difficult to follow, Freud will ask him to repeat the dream. The patient’s second telling is usually different, and Freud has found that the parts that are different are “the weak spot in the dream’s disguise.” In other words, in the second telling, the patient is attempting to replace “any expressions that threaten to betray its meaning by other less revealing ones.”
Freud next states that dreams are possible because during sleep “the resistance loses some of its power.” After this, he discusses superficial associations, that is, when we have one thought and then have another thought that seems only superficially related to the first. When this happens, one of two things is happening — either the censorship has concealed the connection between the two thoughts or the censorship has concealed one or both of the thoughts.
(B) Regression [Psychic Apparatus]
Freud compares the mental apparatus to a compound microscope. He refers to the different components of the mental apparatus as agencies or systems. These different systems have a relationship to one another much as the different lenses in a microscope are arranged behind one another.
Psychical activity begins with sense-perception (i.e., when we experience an external or internal stimuli) and ends with motor activity. Two systems are involved here, the system that receives the sense-perception (perception system) and the system that discharges it (motor system). When we receive the sense-perception, a trace or memory is left in the psychical apparatus. When memory-traces are linked together, they become associations. Some of these associations are conscious and some are unconscious.
While psychical activity normally moves from the perception system to the motor system, in dreams the physical activity moves toward the perception system and then turns into a sensory image. This is why he refers to dreams as regressive.
(C) Wish-Fulfillment
Freud discusses the causes of dreams. Sometimes it appears as though an unfulfilled conscious wish has caused a dream, as we might dream of that wish being fulfilled. Although this sometimes happens with children, when an adult dreams of a conscious wish, the dream is actually about a deeper wish, as the daytime wish has awakened “an unconscious wish with the same tenor.”
Sometimes our anxieties from the day find their way into our dreams, but in order to do so, they must conform to the demands of our dream life and turn into a wish. To illustrate this process, Freud shares one of his own dreams: He tells his wife that he has a piece of news for her, but she refuses to listen. He assures her that she would be happy to hear the news and says that their son’s officer’s mess had sent them money. He then goes into town with his wife and sees his son. The young man is not in his uniform but in sports clothes, and he climbs up onto a basket near a cupboard. Freud calls out to his son, but his son doesn’t hear him. It appears as though his son’s forehead is bandaged.
The day of the dream, Freud had had distressing thoughts about his son, who was in the military, and had not received news of him in over a week. The dream expressed Freud’s worry that his son had been injured or killed — e.g., his wife did not want to hear his news, his son had a bandage. The dream also expressed Freud’s wish that his son was okay — e.g., his son appeared, his son was not in his military clothes, his son was climbing (not falling).
To understand why dreams always contain wishes, Freud explains the psychical apparatus in more detail. When sensory excitation impinges on the apparatus, the apparatus attempts to discharge the excitation “along a motor path.” When internal needs cause an excitation, the apparatus seeks discharge in movement, meaning an internal change or an expression of emotion. For instance, when a baby is hungry (excitation), it screams until it is fed (its excitation is discharged). The baby comes to remember being fed, and the next time it is hungry, it will remember being fed. As the baby remembers being fed, it experiences a psychical impulse to be fed. We refer to this impulse as a wish.
(D) Arousal by Dreams, Anxiety Dreams
Unconscious thoughts and feelings never go away and can again become an excitation. For example, If I was humiliated 30 years ago, that emotion is still in my unconscious, and if it becomes an excitation, I will experience the humiliation as though it just happened. When this memory and in turn emotion becomes an excitation, one of two things must happen. First, the excitation can become discharged in the form of a movement. Second, the excitation can become bound to the preconscious, meaning that it is expressed in our preconscious thoughts, something that happens in dreams and can also happen in psychoanalysis.
(E) - (F) Repression, the Unconscious and Consciousness
Freud references the theories of other scholars he shared in Chapter One and declares that his own theory corroborates these other theories in all but two ways — first, only he believes that dreams are not meaningless, and second, only he believes that dreaming is primarily psychic, not somatic. He then explains why dream-thoughts can be so abnormal, so irrational.
Freud next returns his attention to the psychical apparatus. The apparatus attempts to avoid excitation or to at least limit too much excitation from accumulating. Too much excitation is unpleasurable, and so when we experience too much excitation, we wish to discharge the excess excitation.
He says that we have two systems which seek to limit unpleasure. The first system does not allow anything unpleasurable to come to mind; in other words, this system employs the “ostrich policy” of repression. The second system seeks to limit unpleasure by discharging excitations, but this is complicated, because by discharging excitations, the second system risks bringing unpleasurable thoughts to mind.
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